


Crossfire

by Huggle



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, harold is conflicted, protective Elias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-03
Packaged: 2017-12-28 08:29:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd always been aware of the unpleasant things that could be done to him - to them - because of their work.  Because they wouldn't turn away or back down.  He'd never expected it to happen because they became pawns in someone else's game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossfire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a meme of interest prompt.

There’s little care shown for his physical condition.

He expected none, once he realised their intent, but all the same the harshness of how they handle him, the cruelty of it, locks the breath inside his lungs. His heart hammers so much that he feels it in every inch of his body, a relentless pounding that surely can’t continue without causing something to fail.

He does protest – not plead, these are not men who will be moved by a request for mercy – and tries to point out what to him are the glaring flaws in their theory.

How can they be right? What are their basing their supposition on? If they just tell him, it won’t withstand the scrutiny – because they’re wrong.

But these are not men who will be moved by the use of logic or reason, either. They don’t justify or explain. They simply hold him down, and Ernest Sawyer comes to stand in front of him.

“It wasn’t actually you I had in mind for this,” he says. “Hence why I have such a large entourage tonight. If I’d known it would be you I’d be entertaining, I could have saved myself paying out overtime.”

Pinned on his front as he is, unable to look at the man, he has to settle for what information the tone and direction of his voice can provide.

“But I guess you’ll do.”

Sawyer’s voice moves around the table, until he is standing behind him.

That’s all the warning he gets before a hand comes to rest heavy on his back and the jeering begins.

 

They abandon him, barefoot and in shirtsleeves and pants, on a dark corner near what looks to be an industrial estate. They take his glasses, too, so everything beyond perhaps a foot in any direction is a disorientating mix of shapes and shadows.

“You can tell our mutual friend that this was so easy I could do it again any time. I will do it again, get it perfect next time, and maybe then _you_ can watch. He should consider this a friendly warning.”

Then the window of the limo rolls up, hiding Sawyer from sight. The face staring back at him in the tinted glass is pale, blurry, the face of a stranger.

The car pulls away, disappears into the darkness.

He has no phone, no idea of where he is, or exactly how long he’s been gone.

But he has to choose a direction, so he opts for the one the limo took. Eventually it should lead to a main road. From there he might be able to get his bearings or find someone who could possibly be trusted to help him.

 

The first place he finds is an all night diner. It’s a haven of brightness, of as near to normality as he can expect to find under the circumstances, and he staggers eagerly towards it. He stumbles through the door.

The only other person there is a waitress, sitting at the counter with a bored expression on her face. 

She looks over, stands up.

“You get mugged?”

“I...I need to use your phone. Please.”

She stares at him for a moment, then points to the payphone on the wall. “Only one we got.”

She gives him some change from her pocket, and it’s the first kindness anyone has shown to him in...since... 

He remembers tea being put beside him on the desk, and then later – when it was just him and Bear, he remembers putting on his jacket, petting the dog, and then leaving for....somewhere....

He can only offer a nod as gratitude, unsure of his voice. He dials their emergency number. Leaves the payphone number, and hangs up.

Then he slumps against the wall, waiting for the return call.

Less than a minute passes before the phone rings. He picks it up, almost goes to his knees with relief at the voice he hears on the other end.

“I’m in an all night diner. The address is....”

“Burmont and Lexington,” the waitress supplies.

He passes it on. Please hurry is what he wants to say. But he knows it’s unnecessary. 

“Yes, I’ll stay inside.”

The call ends, and he goes to sit in one of the booths, then thinks better of it. He needs badly to sit down; his back and his leg are a solid block of agony so severe they’ve pushed everything else to the periphery.

But if he tries to sit down, they will have competition.

“Can I get you anything, mister? Tea, coffee? You hungry?”

He may never eat again, but he knows the feeling of shock that’s settling over him. “Tea would be appreciated. Could you please put sugar in it? As much as you can. I’m afraid I can’t pay you, but-“

She looks like she wants to pat his arm, but seems to know any form of touch would be intolerable for him. “Don’t worry about it.”

She brings him a cup and lets him drink it while he stands staring out of the window, until a sleek black car screeches to a halt in front of the diner.

 

Despite himself, he has John wait outside. 

It isn’t easier, but he’s tolerated far worse than this. He keeps his eyes fixed on the tall shadow beyond the glass, and locks his fingers around the bed rails and reminds himself to breath every time the doctor looks up at him.

They take bloods, at his request, although he confiscates the samples – later a courier of his own will pick them up from him and a private lab will do the work and he will deal with the results from there. There is no quibbling; he’s paying enough to this facility that while questions might be thought of, none are asked.

Certainly no one mentions contacting the police.

He is given a wide spectrum shot, some additional medication, and some basic instructions on how to care for his stitches. He takes it all in, thanks them and dresses. In the same clothes as before, because he has no others with him.

When he comes out of the room, John looks at him once. Again a question, thought of but this time asked even if it’s just by that tight grim expression that settles on his face.

He takes John’s arm, allowing himself that, and lets himself be led away.

 

Bear is quiet, when they return to the library. It isn’t where John wished to take him, but it’s where he wished to go, and so there is where they end up.

The dog is astute and sits close to them both, alert, watching. 

He considers how things might have gone differently this evening if he had let Bear come when he trailed him to the door.

Bear would most likely be dead now.

He considers if the timing of the numbers had been slightly different – if he had gone to the meeting with Antonia Salou, and John had been the one to trace and follow Peter Hayman’s SUV.

He wants to believe John would have been alright – lethal, efficient, the only one to walk away unscathed, leaving eight injured or dead behind him.

But his imagination is treacherous, and it plays out the other scenario – they would have been more brutal with John than they were even with him, because John was capable of fighting back. He wonders, not for the first time, if that had ever happened to him before. 

The CIA was cruel, indifferent; he will sometimes see a hint in something John does or says, or a reaction he tries hard to conceal.

There are wounds John carries inside, and he knows from experience those are the ones that can take the longest to heal, if they ever do.

What he wants to know is if there is a way to cope with this. He has no faith, no Faith, but he prays anyway that John can’t tell him how to deal with what he is faced with, because that would mean John speaking with the voice of experience.

His mind is filled with an image of John, lying back on the examination table, while he endured. Because of all his talents, that is probably what John does best – he endures. 

He can’t be sorry, of how it turned out. John has endured enough. He will probably have to endure more, but at least not this.

It’s only when he looks properly at John – John who has pulled across a chair and is sitting facing him, pulling the other chair around so there’s no alternative, that he realises this has not just happened to him.

“Do you know,” he begins. He has to pause, but John’s hands settle on his forearms. They’re shaking, and he watches pain and anger and disbelief battle across John’s face. He’s seen him like this before, and he knows that John will leave later and find the men who did this. He knows what will happen then.

He doesn’t want John near them, mindful of Sawyer’s veiled threat. 

“Elias,” he says, simply. He hopes John will be able to absorb everything from that one word and come to the right conclusion so that no further explanation is necessary.

John gets up, starts towards the gun locker installed in the stacks. 

He catches his wrist, encourages him to sit down again.

“No. This was a message for Elias. They had....” He doesn’t want to say it, but John is aware their work makes them targets for people who don’t deserve to be living when better people are not. “They had planned for you to deliver it, given Elias’s inclination towards you. They seemed to think, somehow, that we would matter to him.

“That we are in fact working together. Ridiculous but they wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise.”

He still has hold of John’s wrist. Keeps hold of it, when John finally urges him to his feet, takes him to the bed in the spare room and gets him to lie down. John lies down beside him, face to face, the last thing he sees before pain and a weariness that is bone deep and beyond drives all consciousness from him.

 

He awakes with the dawn the next morning, but doesn’t get up. Instead he lies there, and wonders if John left during the night to exorcise his anger.

Maybe ten minutes later, John comes in and wordlessly hands him a phone.

“I believe I owe you an apology,” Elias says. “I know you’ll doubt the sincerity, Harold, but I find it unacceptable that you were dragged into this. I want you to know it’ll be taken care of.”

“I would prefer to know how than be given a simple assurance.”

He can almost hear the resigned smile in Elias’s voice. “Do you really? I know, you’re a man for details. I think, in this instance, you’d be better off ignorant. But I want you to know you don’t have to worry about John. I won’t let Sawyer touch him. He’ll come to regret touching you.”

It’s impossible to trust Elias. He didn’t believe in hurting children; yet he put Leila in that truck with John, forced him to sit helpless as they both froze. He took Detective Carter’s son.

He had men follow the families of the police officers in HR, photograph them, use them as leverage. 

He doesn’t doubt for a minute that Elias’s rules are written in chalk. His promises probably carry as much permanence or worth.

It drives him to the edge that he has to rely on Elias for John’s safety. But all the things he could do to inhibit Sawyer, to see him taken care of – they will all take time.

Elias’s methods are brutal, effective and when he chooses them to be, frighteningly fast.

He has no choice but to trust Elias this time.

“Very well.”

“Just keep John out of it. Keep him there with you.”

He hangs up, wondering how exactly he should do that.

John stares down at him and he can see he’s on the verge of putting on a vest, arming himself and going after Sawyer and his gang. Heading straight into the middle of whatever Elias has planned to take care of the threatened annexation of his territory.

There’s a part of him that thinks they are both entitled to that revenge. But he will not have John caught between Sawyer’s men and Elias’s men, where a meant or a stray shot might cost him one of the three remaining people he can’t bear to lose.

“Please stay,” he manages.

John does.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've failed miserably at the ten in ten challenge but I am going to finish it dammit! Two to go. Then maybe I'll start over.


End file.
